The present invention relates to a process and apparatus for continuously dehydrating fabrics in rope form.
It is well-known that in order to perform the continuous dehydration of fabrics, wringing rolls are prevailingly used, which are commonly denominated "mangles" or "paddlers", and are arranged as pairs through which the fabrics, by being squeezed between the rolls, undergoing a wringing which causes the expulsion (as a function of applied pressure values) of large portion of the liquid which soddens the fabrics.
Other, less diffused systems, provide for the fabrics to slide above one or more pipe(s) equipped with holes or slots, through which a suction is drawn in order to remove most liquid contained in the fabric.
Both of these systems can be advantageously used in order to treat fabrics in open-width form, but they yield very poor results when they are used in order to dehydrate fabrics in rope form, in that the shape of the fabric in rope form is not very suitable for an efficacious expulsion of the liquid either by simple wringing or by suction.
Therefore, in order to dehydrate fabrics in rope form batchwise systems are often used, such as, e.g., basket centrifuges into which a batch of fabric is charged and then, when the centrifugation is ended, is discharged from the centrifuge. One will realize that these batchwise systems, although more achieving satisfactory results as regards the amount of liquid extracted from the fabric per unit weight, are however more time consuming and require more burdensome means in order to charge and discharge the fabrics to/from the centrifuges, and therefore are not very advantageous from an economical viewpoint.